From the author of

From the author of

Intel no longer uses pure clock speed to gauge the performance of their
processors. This article helps explain how to interpret the new system.

Introduction

Years ago, everything else being equal, the processor with the fastest clock
speed was the fastest performer. However, starting with the Intel Pentium
II/Celeron and the AMD Athlon/Duron families of processors, other processor
features such as front-side bus speed, clock multipliers, onboard L1 and L2
cache size, and L2 cache speed began to complicate processor comparisons. With
some high-performance desktop processors such as the Intel Pentium 4 Extreme
Edition now featuring on-board L3 cache and mobile processors such as the
Pentium M providing better performance at lower clock speeds than the Mobile
Pentium 4, simple clock-speed comparisons between processors are more misleading
than ever before.

In this article, you will learn why Intel has decided to completely revise
its method of identifying both mobile and desktop processors. You will also
learn how processors are identified in the new numbering scheme and how to
determine what factors are used to sequence the numbers in a given processor
family.